Sony movies missing from Xbox service

Has the company thrown its toys out of pram on NXE launch?

At first it was thought that Sony had gone to some drastic measures to show its distaste of Xbox's new dashboard update by taking its movies off of Netflix's streaming service – Netflix Watch Instantly. But, it seems that the reason is a licensing issue (see update below).

One of the biggest updates to the US version of the dashboard was the arrival of Netflix's movie-streaming service, but it seems that the numbers of movies available have dramatically dropped.

This is due to Columbia, a subsidiary of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, titles not available to stream via the Xbox 360.

Gold standard

Games website Joystiq were first to point out that Columbia movies, such as Bad Boys and We Own The Night, were missing from the service.

Frustratingly, according to the website, you will only find out if a movie is available to watch via your Xbox when you line it up in your movie queue.

Netflix Watch Instantly is only available in the US to those with an Xbox Live Gold account. At the moment, the service is still a soft launch, with around 300 titles available.

UPDATE

Apparently, it's not Sony's fault for the lack of films from Columbia, but a Netflix licensing issue. Joystiq has updated its story with the following:

"As watching instantly becomes a more prominent part of the Netflix service, our goal is to have all of our streaming content licensed for all of our partner devices. We're doing well in this area, but it will take some time before we fully achieve that goal.

"Today, titles regularly come in and out of license and there is a natural ebb and flow to what we have on license at any given point in time. In the case of Xbox 360, a few hundred titles are temporarily unavailable to be streamed via the Xbox game console.

"Those titles are still available to be watched on subscribers' computers and on TVs via other partner devices, and we hope they'll be licensed for Xbox 360 shortly."